Last year I created detailed terrain maps of several countries and US states by combining elevation and texture data from several different sources. Since then, I have had numerous requests to create high resolution terrain maps of other countries and regions. Instead of continuing to create individual custom maps, I have decided to [...]

**UPDATE 8/13/2011** – I have made a couple important updates. First, I have released a global version of the very popular 90-meter terrain map. I have also relaxed the licensing restrictions to allow for commercial use. See below for more details on both of these changes.

The Clean Earth overlays replace the default Google Earth textures at high altitudes for the entire Earth. Instead of seeing inconsistent strips of different aerial/satellite photography that look very unrealistic, you can now see a nice clean natural looking Earth surface. The Clean Earth overlays use hill shading to exaggerate the vertical elevations of the [...]

This terrain map of California was created by combining the NASA Blue Marble imagery with the global elevation data from the Space Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). The combination of these two data sets creates an amazing new way of viewing the Earth’s topography and landforms.